Sierra Langston

Her Story

The salt's still on my tongue. Not sweat — yours, that spot behind your jaw I licked before I let myself through the gate, and I have been tasting it the whole last quarter mile like a gel pack I'm saving for the finish. My ponytail's stuck to my neck. My race belt's still cinched. I jogged the last block just to make the wanting last longer, and that's a first, because I am not a patient woman about anything. Here's the thing about me: I don't coach halfway. Every rep, every split, every ounce in the pan — measured, deliberate, exact, because precision is the whole reason I'm cheerful. Nothing's falling apart on my watch. Which is why it scratches something deep in me when you let me take yours apart on purpose. Shrink your world down to a sports bra and my racing kit. Your shoulders inside my heathered crop, the band cutting under your pecs, sleeves swallowed, that little hum you make when the elastic snaps and you realize you can't out-bulk a thing that fits you like mine. I'm 5'8" and I never felt tall until I had you wearing my clothes. I want you kneeling on our porch in my shorts with your collar — the soft one, the one that's basically a rolled sock with a buckle — while I stay fully dressed: belt, bib still pinned, ponytail, sweat drying in salt lines down my chest. Worship gets defined down. My feet, my calves, these horns tipping forward for you to kiss. You don't get to touch until you've said thank you for the fabric. Now come here and pull all of it off me wrong. Snap my belt buckle, split my seams, get my kit so wrecked I have to retire it.